Cloud computing trend is shifting towards the small business; more and more, small businesses are moving towards cloud computing and its alluring benefits. Many Small businesses have collaborated with MSPs and other private cloud providers, but the fact still remains, “is the small business sector really pulling towards the cloud?” Or is the security risks associated, making small businesses have second thoughts.

A recent research conducted by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) confirmed that although 60% of small businesses are using cloud-computing services, but the remaining 40% are put off by security fears. According to research, data theft or loss is the biggest concern for companies that have not yet taken up cloud computing services amounting to about (61%), and others being reliable access to online services (55%), concerns over who would have access to the data (53%), liability issues (41%), and over-dependence on cloud services (33%).

FSB national chairman John Allan said “Many small businesses are recognizing the advantages of cloud computing services, but there remains a great deal of concern that sensitive data may not be secure or the service is not reliable”, “Businesses don’t want to transition to cloud-based systems without knowing who will be liable, if something goes wrong.”

While using private and public cloud functions you expose your sensitive data to a certain degree of risk, may it be your client data on the customer relationship management (CRM) Software or other Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, Creating offsite backups and data sharing, setting up social media pages and account. In any case, you need to entrust your sensitive data with a third party. For small business, cloud does offer significant cost saving with sophisticated software and hardware but there is a degree of risk involved.

Cloud safety is all about finding the right cloud vendors and implementing technologies that focuses on both identity verification and data protection. Thus, while selecting a vendor, you should keep few things in mind:

 Secure transmission:

Secure transmission refers to the transfer of data such as confidential or proprietary information over a secure channel. As all data, Traveling between the user and the Cloud service or platform must traverse via internet, it becomes of utmost importance that the data transmission is encrypted and authenticated using industry standard protocols, such as ‘IPsec’ (Internet Protocol Security), which is developed for the same reason.

Data Security:

Your data should be securely encrypted when it is on the provider’s servers and while it is in use by the cloud service, some cloud services can also provide local encryption and decryption of your files in addition to storage and backup. Which solves the issue of both encrypting your files on your own computer and storing them safely on the cloud; Therefore, securing your files in such a way that no one including the network administrators and the cloud vendors have access to your data except you.

Secure Access:

Data stored in the cloud could be accessed by any employee/user within the organization; thus, there is a need of bifurcation and classification of the data into different sensitivity segments and differentiated level of access, to provide much more security to the data.

Secure API’s:

The Software interface which is used by the user to leverage cloud computing software’s,  ”Reliance on a weak set of interfaces and APIs exposes organizations to a variety of security issues related to confidentiality, integrity, availability, and accountability,”. Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recommends learning, how the cloud provider is integrating security measure & technologies throughout its services.

Cyber attacks:

Cloud is vulnerable to cyber attacks and hack as its leverage via the internet, but recent advances have made it quite impervious to such attempt as advance security measures and technologies are implemented by most of the vendors to make data on the cloud safer. Choose a cloud provider those intendeds to analyze the cloud infrastructure, identify critical points of weakness, configuration flaws & compliance violations that can lead to cyber security breaches and use advance technologies to overcome them.

Conclusion:

Most of the Cloud Providers provide premium quality protection against all of the mentioned risks. Still, it is important to address these issues with the cloud provider before you entrust your sensitive data to its servers; but this should not be a deal breaker, as you compare Cloud benefits the pros outweighs the cons. The advantages provided by cloud computing to small businesses are far too much to dismiss; Thus, making cloud computing a must for small businesses to survive in this competitive environment. 

vCloud Security

vTech is positioned to provide high-performance security to protect the virtualized data center and extended cloud with firewall and intrusion prevention services (IPS) capabilities. Cloud Security helps you safely and confidently leverage cloud computing services and solutions.

We offer industry-leading best practices in the design and management of online services.

To protect your environment and data, we follow the security management and development life cycle. Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) means designed and built from the ground up using a comprehensive approach for writing more secure, reliable and privacy-enhanced code.

We are responsible for the platform and endeavors implemented to provide a cloud service that can meet the security, privacy and compliance requirements of our customers. However, we need your help in protecting your environment once the service has been provisioned, including the applications, data content, virtual machines, and access credentials, among other things.

to know more log on to http://vtechsolution.com/vcloud-security